My Best Friend
by Sameuspegasus
Summary: In which Blaine has a hair gel crisis, rumours spread like wildfire, and Sam and Blaine fail at cunning plans. Blam! Friendship, slight pre-slash.


**Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Glee.**

Blaine dug furiously through his gym bag. Oh, no way. This could not be happening. _Calm down. Don't panic. Breathe. _He sucked a breath in through his nose, letting it out slowly through the mouth. It had to be in there somewhere. Carefully, he started emptying the bag, placing items carefully on the low wooden bench. Shower Gel. Face wash. Moisturising sunscreen. Lip Balm. Deodorant. Water bottle. Banana. Shower towel. Sweat towel. Smelly gym clothes. He dug into the corners, tipping the bag upside down, but nothing came out. He'd left his hair gel at home.

There was nothing for it. He was going to have to hide in the locker room for the rest of his life.

"Hurry up, dude, we're gonna be late for Glee," Sam's voice called from the next room. Blaine frantically looked for somewhere to hide. People had seen him like this once before, and once was enough, thanks. Dammit, stupid open showers. He took the only available option, grabbing his towel and throwing it over his head.

Sam's footsteps came closer. "Blaine? Why do you have a towel over your head?"

"Do you, uh, have some gel I can use?" Blaine asked as casually as he could, suddenly regretting the towel-over-the-head decision, which had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now seemed just to call attention to the situation. It was just Sam. It wasn't like it was anyone he actually had to impress.

Sam tugged on the towel, pulling it off quickly. Blaine felt his hair spring up wildly as the weight lifted off it. "Sorry, bro, I don't use gel."

"You expect me to believe your hair just hangs like that naturally? You must have something in it."

But Sam was distracted, smiling his wide, guileless smile. "Bro, you have the most awesome hair I have ever seen. Come on, we'll be late."

"No, I can't go out like this. Who uses gel?" He looked speculatively at the rows of lockers on the wall. Normally, as student body president and part-time superhero, he didn't condone breaking into lockers, but these were desperate times.

Sam clapped him comfortingly on the back. "Just come to Glee, man. You can do a Justin Timberlake song, it'll be perfect."

"Justin Timberlake doesn't have terrifying, giant hair."

"Not anymore, but he did, back in the day. Didn't stop him being awesome."

Blaine started carefully placing things back in his gym bag. He knew he was being a baby. He knew he was being melodramatic. It was ridiculous. He shouldn't be embarrassed about his hair. Only he was, and there was nothing he wanted to do less than walk down the halls of McKinley with clown hair.

"Come on," pleaded Sam, giving him puppy eyes that would rival even the tiniest of Labradors. "You can wear my hoodie on the way. No one will even see it. Mr Schue wears a ton of crap in his hair, I bet he has some."

That was the awesome thing about Sam. One of the awesome things. He knew people would talk if they came out of the locker room with Blaine wearing his hoodie, and he totally didn't care. Because they were best buds, and if his best bud needed him, he was there in a heartbeat.

Slowly, Blaine nodded. It wasn't far to the choir room, and he could have the hood up the whole time. Sam was bigger than him, so it might just hide his face, too. Mr Schue was sure to have some kind of strong hold hair product.

It turned out Sam's hoodie was insanely comfortable. It was bright red, old enough to be worn in, but new enough to still be fluffy inside, and it was big enough for Blaine to swim in. He pulled up the hood to cover the rapidly expanding curls on his head, and didn't bother rolling up the sleeves. Wow, he might just have to get one of these. Only for wearing at home, obviously.

Sam laughed. "You're so cute. Here, let me help." Reaching over, he grabbed Blaine's right hand and rolled up the sleeve, repeating the act with the left sleeve. And that was normal. Blaine was sure bros always rolled up other bros' sleeves.

When they made it to the choir room, Blaine could feel the stares boring into him. He lifted the hood enough to look around him and discovered everyone was already there.

"Great, everyone's here," Mr Schue clapped his hands and turned to the whiteboard.

"Did you join a gang?" Brittany asked, before informing the others, "Blaine would win all the gang fights. He has the best voice."

Blaine was never entirely sure what Brittany was talking about, but he was pretty sure she thought gangs fought musical theatre battles.

"Why are you wearing Sam's hoodie?" Tina sounded kind of jealous, even though Blaine knew she was trying really hard not to be, just like he tried really hard not to think about Sam's lips.

"I don't want to alarm you, but there's some kind of small animal attached to your head," Artie said. Blaine tugged the hood down self consciously.

He opened his mouth to ask Mr Schue about hair gel, but the teacher got in first. "I feel like this is the perfect time to announce this week's theme. Those of you who have been here a few years will remember we did a 'Born this Way' number. For those of you who weren't here last time, 'Born this Way' week is a time to share and celebrate who we are and remind each other that we care about each other, flaws and all."

Sam tugged on the back of Blaine's hood, pulling it down so everyone could see the curls. "I don't think Blaine's hair is a flaw," he said, "I like it. It's more fun this way. I think it's grown since we left the locker room."

Blaine glanced back at him, his embarrassment easing slightly at the friendly words and honest smile. That was another good thing about Sam – he didn't just say things. He went and sat down in his usual place, Sam next to him. Maybe he could wait until after Glee to ask Mr Schue for hair product.

Once they got to practicing, Blaine forgot all about his hair. Nobody really mentioned it, and to be honest, it was much more comfortable without his hair glued to his head. Anyway, other people were going to have equally embarrassing things on their shirts.

In fact, he got so wrapped up in singing and dancing that when the bell rang to signal the end of lunch, he forgot to ask Mr Schue about borrowing gel, and also forgot he was still wearing Sam's hoodie.

He didn't remember until halfway through English when he heard the whispers.

A girl stifling a giggle. "Do you think he finally used up all the hair gel in Ohio?"

Her friend replying in a whisper loud enough to be heard by the whole class, including the teacher and the three people sleeping at the back of the room: "No, he totally did the nasty with Sam Evans in the showers at lunch. He's even wearing Sam's sweater."

Blaine tried not to react visibly. What should he do? Should he take the sweater off? Should he deny it? Or would that be seen as protesting too much?

"Seriously?" A third girl chimed in. "I thought Sam was with Brittany."

"I saw them coming out," the second girl said, "They looked totally furtive. Sam kept looking around, and Blaine was hiding his face, even though everyone knew it was him."

The first girl giggled again. "I knew it! I knew they were doing it. They're so cute together."

Blaine blinked in surprise. Well, that was a first. People didn't usually talk behind his back because they thought his relationship with another guy was cute.

"Quiet!" The teacher ordered, and everyone hushed for a few minutes before the whispers and giggles and rustle of passed notes struck up again.

He took the hoodie off in the hallway between classes, but all it did was make him suddenly cold, and further excite his hair. The whispers and sideways looks continued as he hurried to his next class. The homophobes were less vocal at McKinley since what had happened with Karofsky, but Blaine wasn't lying to himself, they were still out there, and he didn't want to run into one.

His next class was even worse, because they had a sub, and therefore the teacher had no control, and because Sam was in it too, and sat next to him, just like usual.

Blaine tried to let him out of it. "You don't have to be seen with me. I'm pretty sure I ruined your reputation today."

"Whose work am I gonna copy if I don't sit by you?" Sam joked, "Besides, I've got a plan to make them forget all this."

_Please don't take your shirt off in class_, Blaine mentally begged his friend.

To his relief, Sam's body remained enclosed in plaid for the whole period, and he didn't even respond to the gossip around them.

He and Sam played tic tac toe and pretended to watch the video the sub put on.

Around them, people stopped even bothering to lower their voices.

"Yeah, in the locker room at lunch."

"He stopped wearing gel so Sam's got something to hold on to."

"Does Brittany know?"

"She was there too."

"Sam's hoodie – "

"Knew it!"

"How long?"

"All the hot guys..."

"It's so fluffy!"

"Wig?"

"Totally heard them-"

"Last week – "

"Flirting..."

Blaine tried really hard to tune them out, concentrating on beating Sam in ten straight games of tic tac toe, which wasn't all that hard.

Just before the bell rang, Sam leaned across. "Choir room, after school. I'll tell you the plan."

To his surprise, no one slammed Blaine against a locker or slushied him for the rest of the day. When he got to the choir room, he played piano while he waited for Sam, and felt better for it. Music always helped.

Sam arrived a few minutes later, to tell him the plan. "Politicians use stuff like this all the time, right? Like a publicity stunt? So we use it for our own good. Say we're going to confirm or deny it at the 'Born this Way' concert we're putting on, and charge an entry fee to get in. We'll make enough money for nationals, easy," he said excitedly.

Blaine supposed it could be a workable idea, if they put up with the talk for the rest of the week and checked everyone at the door for rotten eggs and other projectiles. The rest of the Glee kids would be easy to talk into it, if it meant making funds for Nationals, and they already had a few numbers show-ready. He decided against reminding Sam that politicians didn't usually like gay sex scandals. He could deal with talk for a few days. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

"Oh, and I got you this," Sam tossed a small tub to him. "It's probably way cheaper and nastier than what you usually use."

Blaine couldn't help but smile. It was a much cheaper brand than he usually used, and he'd probably use up the whole pot attempting to tame his hair before he left school grounds, but even so it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him. He suspected Sam had skipped a class to go and buy it, and that could do nothing for his grades, but it really was very sweet. In a bro-ish kind of way. It was totally normal bro behaviour to skip class to buy hair gel for your best bro, right?

"Thanks, Sam. That's really nice." He twisted the top off the tub, savouring the sweet smell of the gel.

"It's cool, man. Gave me an excuse to not go to Geography." Sam grinned. "Hey, wait, before you do that-"

Blaine paused with a blob of gel halfway to his head. "Yeah?"

"Can I touch it?"

Blaine cast him a sideways look. "My hair?

"Yeah. It's all springy."

Blaine shrugged. It was the least he could do, considering the effort Sam had gone to, to get him the gel. "I guess so."

Sam prodded at his head, laugh when the curls contracted and sprang back into shape. He stretched one out to its full length, his eyes widening. "Dude, your hair's longer than mine." His fingers gently stroked the hair backwards.

Blaine decided to put a stop to it before it got weird, or he lost the ability to not act on his stupid little crush. He took a step back. "Seriously, thank you so much for the gel. I don't think I could have braved the store with hair like this."

Sam took his hand off Blaine's head, as though suddenly realising it might be weird to stand in the choir room, stroking your best friend's head. "No worries. But seriously, bro, I think your hair's better without it. You look like Harry Potter."

Blaine sighed with relief as he smoothed the gel through his hair and combed it into place with his fingers. It wasn't perfect, because it was only a small tub of gel, and he didn't have his comb to get his part perfectly straight, but nevertheless, it made him feel more confident and in control.

Later, when he was ringing people to get them on board with the plan, he realised with a shock that he was kind of wishing he hadn't gelled his hair. Sure, it looked awesome, but there was nobody in his house to see him, and his hair felt stiff and heavy against his head.

"So, did something happen with Sam?" Tina asked him, when he rang her. She sounded cheerful, but she was his other best friend, so he knew it was her fake-happy voice.

"Sam's straight, Tina."

She was entirely on board with the "Blaine Anderson and Sam Evans Are Not Having Sex in the School Showers" show.

Mr Schue liked the idea, too. Blaine edited the description a little for him. Namely, by removing the "Blaine Anderson and Sam Evans Are Not Having Sex in the School Showers" bit and replacing it with "Embrace Yourself", which was the type of thing Mr Schuester was always down with, even though he never quite caught on that the lessons might apply to him too."

Finn Hudson agreed to come and help, and tried to give Blaine a lecture filled with older-brotherly advice, which didn't quite hit the mark. It was even worse because Blaine had never really got along with Finn, even after Finn had admitted to feeling threatened (which had been surprising at the time, given Blaine's status as the new kid, his small stature, and the fact that he batted for the opposite team, but looking back on it, wasn't that surprising at all), and it had got much worse after the whole fiasco with Kurt. Blaine got out of there as fast as possible, and wished he'd made Sam ring him and suffer through the well-meaning but slightly offensive coming out speech.

The gossip only got worse in the next three days.

"In the choir room..."

"They were totally holding hands the other day." (Blaine couldn't even imagine when that had been. People were just making stuff up, now.)

"I heard they had a threesome with Brittany."

"No, it was Tina Cohen-Chang."

"I kind of liked the hair. It was happy hair."

"Sam dyes his hair."

"Showers..."

"It's kinda hot." Huh. No one had ever said that about his relationship with Kurt, even though it had been. He could only suppose it was down to Sam's ridiculously perfect body.

On the plus side, they sold more tickets to their concert than any other non-competition show they'd ever done. And Blaine got to keep wearing Sam's cuddly hoodie, because Sam thought it would keep the interest up, and they would sell more tickets. It gave him a good excuse, because there was no way Blaine could justify wearing an oversized hoodie in public under ordinary circumstances.

By the time Friday rolled around, Blaine was filled with a nervous, fluttery feeling, and the increasing realisation that they hadn't thought this plan through properly. Maybe he should put that on his shirt. "Doesn't Think About Consequences Under Certain Circumstances". He flashed back suddenly to singing to a guy in the gap, and then to – well, he doesn't want to think about Eli. Sure they'd thought about using the attention for their own benefit, but what are they actually going to say? No one's going to believe them when they say they aren't together, now, even though it's the truth.

He supposed they could just dance next to each other in shirts that said DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH SAM and DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH BLAINE . But Mr Schuester would probably say they didn't do the assignment properly, and anyway, the shirts were meant to have your greatest flaws on them. People would probably read it as them thinking their greatest flaw was that they didn't have sex with each other in the showers.

In the end, he went full on crazy wizard-clown with his hair, and wrote HAIR on his shirt.

People started getting impatient halfway through the third song. Rustling, people shifting in their seats, starting to chat. Not during his solo, obviously, but pretty soon afterward. Blaine caught Sam's eye, trying to convey "we need to do something". But, as the renewed attention and catcalls from the crowd announced, it apparently looked more like "we need to do it in the dressing room right now". Due to unfortunate timing, they ended up facing each other and looking into each others' eyes just as Sam was doing one of his famous body rolls that he'd learnt while working as a stripper.

Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him close enough to yell in his ear, "We have to tell them something."

Blaine could hear a few jeers from the audience, but a surprising amount of female cheering as well. "What do we do?"

"I guess our best option is song," Sam yelled.

Blaine wracked his brain for a song they both knew about being platonic best buds that sometimes ran their fingers through each other's hair and/or fantasised about each other's lips.

"You're My Best Friend?" He suggested. Everyone liked a bit of Queen. Sam nodded and gave him the thumbs up.

They arranged it during the break, to do it right before the last big number with the reveal of the shirts. It would give everyone else time to organised things for Born This Way, and let them end the concert the way Mr Schuester wanted it to end. He was crazy excited. There had never been this many people at one of their shows before.

Blaine stood on the stage beside Sam, waiting for his cue to start singing. Luckily, the band had known the song. Blaine thought it was pretty likely that every band ever knew every Queen song, or at least all of Queen's greatest hits.

_Ooh you make me live  
Whatever this world can give to me  
It's you you're all I see  
Ooh you make me live now honey  
Ooh you make me live_

Ooh you're the best friend that I ever had  
I've been with you such a long time  
You're my sunshine and I want you to know  
That my feelings are true  
I really love you  
Oh you're my best friend

He smiled so hard his cheeks hurt, and at the end he high-fived Sam hard enough to hurt his hand. It was awesome, which was definitely a word he'd picked up from Sam.

During "Born this Way" no one seemed that surprised to see HAIR on his shirt. He only caught a glimpse of other people's shirts during the number. Tina's said HAG, which prompted him to give her a spontaneous hug. The new girl, Marley, was wearing one that said BODY, even though her body looked fine to Blaine. Sam, to his surprise, was not wearing DYSLEXIC or even STRIPPER. His said UNDECIDED, or in actual fact UNDICIDED, but Blaine figured that was what he'd meant. He'd have to ask him what he meant by that some time.

XXX

As it turned out, singing a song with the words "I really love you" in it onstage with another guy did nothing to dispel rumours about the two of you doing it in the school showers, even if it also contained the words "You're My Best Friend."

In years to come, they would be infamous as the two dudes who did it in the showers and didn't even get suspended, and nothing could convince anyone otherwise.

The accidental confirmation of the utterly false rumour drastically reduced Sam chances of getting a date (Blaine had never really had any anyway), but Sam didn't seem to mind, and at least it meant Blaine had someone to go to Iron Man 3 with.

It was awesome. And if their celebration hug was slightly too long, no one noticed.


End file.
